The winter’s color

Grown from my experience in Ruby, I take advantage of one more week in Healy, in the ridge’s house, in what is the closest to a home for me today, in order to achieve my meditative thoughts and prepare the rest of my journey. Canada here I come! Indeed, my days in the last frontier before the arctic circle are almost over. I will soon change my country but not my language. I will drive a moving home, fleetingly mine all along my American steps. The deal is made, my sunny Sunday epiphany in Denali is confirmed, I will buy Hannah’s old car to ride my New World on the other side of the Atlantic, on Pacific coasts.
And getting ready for my Canadian stay, I wonder what is awaiting for me. I wonder what I really want to live throughout next weeks. I would like to go back to a more regular hostel work. If I utterly enjoyed Hannah’s farm fresh air and unpredictable tasks, I need to follow my own path for a while, to get some complete solitude. My upcoming road trip is ideal for my lonely need. My next workaway in a guest ranch near Jasper (AB) will fulfill my first desire. As for later, I only know I would like to explore the Canadian Pacific and spend American Thanksgiving somewhere in American Rockies.
But first, I go back to the llamas I didn’t say goodbye to for my aborted departure. But first, I celebrate Hannah 27^th birthday September, 27^th.

The ridge wind blows some rain on the blue house. The weather is milder and have less of a winter taste, it is almost Indian summer. Poor vulnerable rabbits that, I hope, didn’t completely already turn white. It is a fleeting summer though, I quickly taste my first snow flake by a wood stove night. This first Alaskan snow’s white glitters shine in my childish and amazed heart. Indeed, snow always awakes that same pure magic in my fragile shinning heart.
I think this is a fleeting snow, but the next morning white trees make my dream from another world last longer. Those changing trees on the ridge are magically mine, amazingly full of my fleeting dreams, of my silent Alaskan expectations. And during the night’s last hours, a dark sun ends my dreamy polar day and shines so pure in the moonless and already melted snow. Hours intertwined, quiet and white, following my certain heart, my quiet soul. I go. I am. I hope my fragmented notes will give me enough to remember my journey. I repair my biais look on myself. I shed invisible tears to clean my heart. I like who I am. I like this house that stopped to be ephemeral a long time ago, it is now stable and still.

There is still some snow the next morning and the afternoon sunbeam wakes up my hiking legs’ altitude towards Mount Healy overlook trail. I thought I didn’t want to walk that hike, I believed it would be like Bison Gulch. Yet, what a beauty, what a magnificent surprise! I step into sparkling snow that speaks about endless heaven. Walking my white feet in between evergreens is so sweet and peaceful. At some point, when the cool day becomes milder than the cold night, it starts to sound like Bambi as the snow softens and doesn’t stick to branches anymore. The higher I get, the more I see the landscape uncovered by the fog, shinning in the cold winter snow. It is so pleasant to feel the snow thicker under my boots. My gaze and this endless moment hu to the top enjoying the new view on the mountains definitely worth going up. Cheerful moment. Precious instant.

Then, only spread flakes and iced Chunks remain from the snow. Landscapes are brown and muddy again. It makes me think about the Canado-Australian couple I met during my Irish winter*, he told me about Ontario melting snow, everybody hates the muddy after winter snow but he loved it for a reason I can’t remember. Maybe because it means spring is coming. This Friday, the scenery is therefore brown like rain.
However, Saturday morning is slightly covered with frost and snow in a first shy sunbeam. The blue landscape amazingly smells like ice. It then snows heavier as we try to finish the barn, my first end of summer project. It such a different atmosphere from that Labor Day weekend’s singing wind; today, we and King Bob try to warm up near the sparking timber bonfire. From time to time, some light ray go through the trees, immediately melting the sky’s iced tears.
And for my last Monday, Hannah and I ride Jager’s snowmobile throughout tundra. Almost… What an adventure! We get stuck in between trees, grounds are still too warm and melt snow from underneath. It is such a precious last moment of crazy laugh with Hannah before leaving.

My inner weather utterly took advantage of my overtime on the ridge. I feel so peaceful in everything I try. My heart beats with what I discover, I don’t know where my way leads me, I don’t know where my life is going but I know, one day, my heart will know my reasons. In the meanwhile, it follows my drawings on this American land that only belong to me today. In the meanwhile, I go. I almost know my future what, revealed little by little in my hazy dreams clouds, without needing to know the when. My grounds still sometimes feel uncertain, but I am okay with it. I don’t need to be else, and even if I wanted to change that state of mind, I wouldn’t be able. I thus learn to accept how I feel in the present.
Departure however, like any of my departures, brings a certain burning weakness in my soul. I come back to solitude and I feel melancholic. It is time for sadness. Life keeps going, uncertain and impossible to understand. I leave though, my need is non-compressible even if I don’t feel able to go. I leave with Sunday snowed flames’ memories in my heart. I leave with Stormy’s last kisses in my heart. I leave with one last look on the white and blind valley. I leave because going doesn’t mean forever anymore, a friend lives here now. This is my Alaskan shelter.